Mohamed S. Helal, B.A., M.A., L.L.B., LL.M., S.J.D.
Education
- BA, American University in Cairo
- MA, American University in Cairo
- LLB, Ain Shams University Faculty of Law
- LLM, Harvard Law School
- SJD, Harvard Law School
Biography
Mohamed Helal is an Associate Professor of Law at Moritz and an affiliated faculty member of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. Professor Helal is also a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), and is currently serving a five-year term as a member of the African Union Commission of International Law, where he is the African Union Special Rapporteur on International Law and Cyberspace.
Professor Helal teaches courses on Public International Law, the Law of Contracts, the law governing the resort to armed force by states (jus ad bellum), the law of armed conflict (jus in bello) and the theory and history of international law.
Professor Helal’s scholarship focuses on several areas, including the rules regulating the use of armed force by states (jus ad bellum), international organizations and U.N. law, the law of the sea, and the legal aspects of international security affairs. His work has appeared in many leading journals including the European Journal of International Law, Global Constitutionalism, American Journal of International Law – Unbound, Harvard National Security Journal and N.Y.U. Journal of International Law & Politics. Professor Helal has also contributed chapters to numerous edited volumes.
Prior to joining Moritz, Professor Helal served as a Lecturer-on-Law at Harvard Law School and as a visiting professor at the Section Française of the Ain Shams University Faculty of Law in Egypt. In 2020-2021, Professor Helal was also a Visiting Associate Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School.
Professor Helal also previously served as a diplomat and as an international civil servant, including service as Legal Counsel to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, advising on issues relating to African Affairs and relations with Nile Basin States.
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Mohamed S. Helal, Intervention, Force & Coercion: A Historical Inquiry on the Evolution of the Prohibition on Intervention, 106 Int'l L. Stud. 206 (2025)
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Mohamed S. Helal & Hesham M. Bekhit, So Near, Yet So Far: An Egyptian Perspective on the U.S.-Facilitated Negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, 48 Water Int'l 580 (2023)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Law as Power: Advising the State and the Practice of Diplomacy, in Research Handbook on Law and Diplomacy (2022)
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Mohamed S. Helal, On Coercion in International Law, 52 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1 (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Anarchy, Ordering Principles, and the Constitutive Regime of the International System, in Global Constitutionalism (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, The Thucydides Trap and the Future of Global Governance, 113 ASIL Proceedings 100 (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, The Crisis of World Order and the Constitutive Regime of the International System, 46 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 569 (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Freedom From; Freedom For — A Personal Reflection on the Life and Legacy of M. Cherif Bassiouni , 68 DePaul L. Rev. 733 (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Two Seas Apart: An Account of the Establishment, Operation and Impact of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), 30 Eur. J. Int'l L. 903 (2019)
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Mohamed S. Helal, The Myth of U.N. Collective Security, 32 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 1063 (2018)
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Cinnamon Piñon Carlarne & Mohamed S. Helal, A Conversation About Climate Change Law and the ‘International Community’, 8 Climate L. 229 (2018)
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Mohamed S. Helal, The ECOWAS Intervention in the Gambia – 2016, in The Use of Force in International Law: A Case-Based Approach (2017)
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Mohamed S. Helal, The Unknown Unknowns of Humanitarian War, 111 Am. J. Int'l L. Unbound 297 (2017)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Teaching Public International Law: Reflections on the State of the Art in an Era of Uncertainty, 7 J. Commission Int'l L. Afr. Union (2017)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Am I My Brother's Keeper? The Reality, Tragedy, and Future of Collective Security, 6 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 383 (2015)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Justifying War and the Limits of Humanitarianism, 37 Fordham Int'l L.J. 551 (2014)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Inheriting International Rivers: State Succession to Territorial Obligations, South Sudan, and the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, 27 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 907 (2014)
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David Rosenbloom, Noam Noked & Mohamed S. Helal, The Unruly World of Tax: A Proposal for an International Tax Cooperation Forum, 15 Fla. Tax Rev. 57 (2014)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Case Studies: Libya, in The United Nations Security Council in the Age of Human Rights (2014)
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M. Cherif Bassiouni & Mohamed S. Helal, The Second Republic in Egypt ((2012)
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Mohamed S. Helal, Regional Perspectives: The Middle East, in The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in our Times (2011)